Chapter 47: Pablo's headquarters was attacked

Chapter 47: Pablo's headquarters was attacked
“Don't let them get anywhere near that room.”
Pablo’s final command still echoed in Vanya’s ears as Elijah dragged her away, moving so fast that her feet stumbled over themselves against the cold floor. Behind them, the haunting voices of the three women were still calling out Damian’s name—fading farther and farther away, before finally being drowned out by the thud of their own frantic footsteps. They moved along a corridor that felt colder, darker, and more suffocating with every sharp turn.
Only after they rounded a second corner did Vanya gather enough strength to wrench her arm free from Elijah's grip.
“Wait!” she gasped, catching her breath. “Damian is still in there!” Vanya demanded, her chest heaving.
“I know that.”
“Then why are we running away?” Vanya stared at him, incredulous that she even had to voice the question. “We can’t just walk away and leave him at the mercy of those people.”
Elijah let out a harsh, bitter breath, visibly restraining himself from shouting at her. Their relationship had never been good to begin with—Vanya knew full well he disliked her presence—but she also recognized one thing that remained completely unchanged: Elijah was loyal to Damian, to a fault that sometimes made Vanya feel both envious and deeply suspicious. Precisely because of that unyielding loyalty, Elijah’s decision to walk away right now felt entirely alien to her.
“You think I actually want to walk out of here?” Elijah hissed, his voice hushed yet razor-sharp. “Look at our situation right now! Pablo has already dispatched dozens of guards to hunt us down. If we turn back now, we’ll just end up locked in the room next door, forced to watch his twisted game all over again—this time from up close.”
“At least we could try to do something!”
“And then what? What happens after we get captured?”
Vanya had no answer for that. She remained silent, letting Elijah’s question hang heavy in the air, which suddenly felt suffocatingly dense.
“Pablo deliberately let us see all of that,” Elijah continued, his tone softening slightly as if he were only now processing the utter madness of their predicament. “You think that was just a random psychological experiment? He wants to break Damian completely, and he wants us to sit there and watch it happen.”
“I know,” Vanya whispered quietly.
“If you really knew, you’d stop thinking with your emotions for once.”
The words cut deeper than Elijah had probably intended, but Vanya chose not to bite back, because a rational part of her knew he was right. Ever since she saw Damian being stripped of his dignity in that room, her head had been spinning out of control. There was no calculated strategy in her mind, no clear escape route mapped out—only a raw, pulsing urge to turn around, pull Damian out of that nightmare, no matter the consequences.
The sound of heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoing from the far end of the hallway served as a stark reminder that they were in no position to stand around arguing.
Elijah turned his head toward the noise, his posture tensing up. “They’re coming.”
“What do we do now?” Vanya asked, her voice tight.
“Find a way out.”
“This entire facility is a maze!”
“Vanya.” This time, the stern way he spoke her name made her fall silent instantly. Elijah stepped closer, lowering his voice to a barely audible whisper. “If we stay here, we get caught. If we get caught, neither of us can help Damian. So just this once... trust me.”
Vanya searched his eyes for a long moment before finally giving a slow, reluctant nod.
They started running again.
The corridor seemed endless, branching off into identical passageways. Vanya had completely lost her sense of direction after the third or fourth turn—she was no longer keeping count. Elijah tried several doors along the way, but most were locked tight. The ones that opened led only to dusty, empty rooms or cramped, suffocating storage closets—far from the escape route they so desperately needed. Meanwhile, the footsteps behind them grew louder and closer, until Vanya could hear the heavy pounding of combat boots echoing against the marble floor.
“I’m starting to think we’re not going to find a way out of here,” she said, gasping for air as her lungs burned.
“Are you always this optimistic in a crisis?”
“I’m panicking!”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
They took another sharp turn, and for a fraction of a second, Vanya was about to speak again—whether to protest or ask another half-formed question—when a loud, violent explosion echoed from a distance.
BOOM!
Her feet froze instantly, as if anchored to the ground by an invisible force.
Elijah, who was a few paces ahead, halted as well. They exchanged a silent, uneasy look, waiting in the heavy silence as if expecting the noise to explain itself.
“What was that?” Vanya whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Elijah didn’t answer right away. Then the noise came again, this time accompanied by a far more recognizable sound—a heavy volley of gunfire.
The blood in Vanya’s veins seemed to turn to ice. She stared at Elijah, hoping he would tell her she was just hearing things, that it was merely a heavy door slamming shut or a piece of industrial furniture collapsing. But Elijah’s face only grew tighter, his sharp eyes darting toward the source of the noise.
“That’s not Pablo’s guards shooting,” he said softly.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because they wouldn’t be firing heavy weaponry inside their own hidden stronghold.”
Before Vanya could fully process his words, another round of automatic gunfire erupted—multiple shots, clearly originating from the main entrance of the facility. The entire atmosphere around them shifted in a matter of seconds. The guards who had been pursuing them from behind were now shouting frantically at one another, abandoning their hunt and sprinting in the opposite direction. Someone barked frantic orders in Russian over a comms system—Vanya couldn't understand a single word, but the sheer panic in his voice was unmistakable: something massive was going down.
Elijah yanked Vanya behind a heavy structural pillar, pushing her back against the concrete.
Vanya wrapped her arms around herself, trying to suppress the violent tremors starting from her fingertips. Her heart was beating far too fast for her to think clearly—until a sudden realization hit her like a bolt of lightning.
Her phone. The encrypted message she had sent before they breached the facility grounds.
Back when she was still sitting in the passenger seat of the car with Elijah, she had attempted to transmit their live location coordinates. The cellular signal in the remote mountain terrain had been abysmal, and she had never been sure if the message had actually gone through before her screen went black. But she had tried anyway—contacting an emergency line at Interpol without taking the time for a lengthy explanation. Just raw GPS coordinates. And one brief, urgent sentence: Pablo is here.
“Interpol,” Vanya muttered, the word slipping out more to herself than to Elijah.